Progress Comes

Little by little we make progress. Gays deserve equal rights. We are not a humane nation until everybody is truly equal under the law. Thanks to that judge in Polk County, Iowa.

 ~NG

Hermetic Politics

That may sound like an odd phrase to a lot of people, even a lot of my fellow Hermetics, however Hermetics necessarily has a social conscience. I’ll try to give my perspective on issues of importance to me here. I know that I don’t speak for all Hermetics, but that should just be encouragement to write their own blogs!

~NG

The USA Becomes a Police State

An editorial on the United States’ militant tendencies from a fellow blogger.

~NG

Mike Vick: Black Hero

For those of you unfamiliar with the Mike Vick dogfighting case, this article by Geoffrey Norman of the National Review gives a pretty good summary of the issue at hand and some of the history behind it. Update note: Vick did plead guilty to the charges. We have yet to see exactly what that’ll mean for him and dog-lovers everywhere.

Vick is hardly the first person around to engage in the brutal “sport” of dogfighting, and hardly the first celebrity to get involved in large-scale animal cruelty (go ahead and search out “Wilford Brimley + cock fighting”). The difference here is that Vick has shown in dramatic fashion just how flagrant and casual people can be about animal cruelty. I’m of the mind, too, that anybody who could needlessly mistreat an animal is pretty likely to do so to a human, as well.

Before I continue, I will state for the record that I do eat meat. While I lament the cruelty that is often part of the meat industry, I see changes happening and that pleases me. While no untimely death is cruelty-free, there are ways of making it less so. Also, I draw a distinction between killing to eat and killing for fun (which ultimately also includes gambling and the cosmetics industry, among other “uses” of animals as resources). I believe that one can consume animals while still acknowledging the sacredness of what you are consuming (or at least respecting that animal, if you are not the spiritual/religious type).

Now that I’ve covered the basic issues involved in this case, I can get to the part that really pisses me off. At least here in Atlanta, and probably in other areas of the country as well, this has actually been turned into a race issue! Yes, on the evening news we get to hear black folks screaming such lovely things as “Let the brothah go!” and “They’re just dogs, he’s a man!” One man even said that if he won the lottery, he’d use the money to get Mike Vick out of jail! Incredible!

I freely admit that there is still a fair amount of white-versus-black racism in this country (with at least as much of the black-versus-white variety, I should note) and even a tiny bit of it is too much to me. Yet that is no excuse, not at all, for transforming what is essentially an issue of morality into one of “Da Man puttin' da Negro down.” That is, I’m glad to say, not even a little bit what is happening here.

Mike Vick has proven himself guilty here in a number of ways. First of all, he left a paper trail behind him. That is, we know that he was somehow involved in these dog fights. Second, a ton of witnesses say that he personally executed at least a few dogs who weren’t fighting well enough for his appetite. I won't go into how the dogs were executed because it makes me ill to even think of it; see the link above if you want a rundown of a few known methods. Also, probably most damning of all, is the fact that Vick lied to his coach, the Falcons’; manager, and the NFL commissioner by saying that he didn’t do it and then turned around and put in a guilty plea (which he only did because numerous material witnesses had already made plea deals and his case was looking pretty flimsy). With all of this on the table it’s nearly impossible to find a reasonable doubt about his guilt without invoking some sort of metaphysical concept of relativity.

So how has this been transformed into a race issue? Are black people in this country really so culturally terrified of personal responsibility? Do they truly believe that dog fighting is perfectly ok and that we “empowered” white folks are making a big deal out of nothing? Either way, there’s a real social problem underlying the whole thing. This social problem needs to be dealt with, but unfortunately there’s nothing that white America can do about it because anything we say and do is automatically (and tragically not completely without justification) looked upon with suspicion by our black fellow citizens.

The only solution to issues like this is a concerted, long-term racial dialogue. Racial dialogues are nearly impossible in this country, though, because of the complete lack of any sort or race relations available to us as an avenue of communication. Any black person who speaks proper English and doesn’t wear a diamond-studded grill “isn’t black enough”, and any white person who gets in touch with some form of black culture is “stealing from the black man”. (Colin Powell and white people who like blues music are two good examples.) Not only that, but a lot of white folks seem to have a knee-jerk reaction to “race traitors” who actively seek out and try to talk to black political and cultural leaders.

Race is a knee-jerk issue for most of us, and that’s pretty sad. I hate the pop-political term “color-blind” greatly because there’s no such thing. We can never ignore the fact that our skin is of a different color because of our differing genetic and ethnic (cultural) stock, and we shouldn’t have to. We should instead be able to celebrate it on a large scale so that it becomes an aid to communication (by noting that with all our differences, we’re still humans and, in this case, Americans) rather than a barrier.

I think that what needs to be done as a real first step is a public dialogue to air on major network TV in prime time. My proposition is that we get some black luminaries (especially who are respected by black people but have no particular political or economic stake in keeping the races separated, which immediately dismisses Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson from the running), some white luminaries, and some luminaries from other racial and cultural groups in this country (Arabs, Persians and Hispanics being particularly relevant right now) to get up on stage before a live audience on TV several times a month (maybe once a week) and answer cultural questions put to them by the live and home audiences via e-mail and telephone. Nothing should be out of bounds. Everything from “Why do young black guys walk with a limp?” to “Why do white folks look down on us?” should be fair game.

Black folks who could be regulars:
Paul Mooney
Dave Chapel
Barak Obama
Mos Def
Cornel West
Aaron McGruder

White folks who could be regulars:
George Carlin
Amy Goodman
God, someone else, I can’t think…

The lists could go on to many others, but those are people who pop immediately to mind.

Why hasn’t this been done yet?

~NG